>Google has been able to track your location using Google Maps for a long time. Since 2014, it has used that information to provide advertisers with information on how often people visit their stores. But store visits aren’t purchases, so, as Google said in a blog post on its new service for marketers, it has partnered with “third parties” that give them access to 70 percent of all credit and debit card purchases.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607938/google-now-tracks-...
I've been on the exact opposite side of this argument for the past year, both here on the internet and IRL. Sure, we can't look inside Apple's systems, but if they say they're doing X Y and Z, we ought to believe them. Apple knows that if something comes to light after they've billed themselves as a privacy company, it will be a big scandal, so they'll want to keep their word.
Well, here we are, and now I feel stupid. Fool me once...
However, Google can still adopt Apple's position that data collection should be turned off by default and only turned on by the users after you explain what will be done with the data.
They won't since spying on users is how they make the vast majority of their money, but they could.
IMO, a company that really took privacy seriously would never, ever have let humans listen to Siri recordings without explicit user content. There is in fact nothing Apple can say post-mortem to change this.
Now, whether any of the mainstream alternatives are better for privacy is a legitimate question—but at this point, I don't think anyone should choose Apple because of their privacy claims. If there are no more incidents in the next five years, maybe we can reconsider at that point, but that is how long it should take for Apple to regain trust. (That, or Apple opening their systems to public audit, which will never happen.)